Messiaen Centenary Concert
Wednesday 10th December 2008
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London
Messiaen Couleurs de la Cite Celeste*
Messiaen Sept Haikai^
Pierre Boulez sur Incises
Sebastien Vichard piano*
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano^
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez conductor
http://messiaenfestival.com/
Back in February I said Messiaen and Pierre-Laurent Aimard brought me to the Royal Festival Hall for the first time 7 years ago and they took me back for the amazing concert which was the opening night of Southbank Centre's year-long Messiaen centenary festival, featuring Aimard, Susanna Malkki and the Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC) doing Des Canyons aux etoiles. Having waited for a year, it has finally come to the closing night of the festival, on Messiaen's actual centenary, with Aimard, the festival director, again on the piano and Pierre Boulez, Messiaen's most celebrated pupil, conducting his own ensemble performing two relatively underplayed works by Messiaen and, oddly, Boulez's own sur Incises. One wonders why the team is not celebrating the centenary in Paris instead, but I am not complaining!
Twenty years ago, on Messiaen's 80th birthday, Boulez conducted both Couleurs de la Cite Celeste (1963) and Sept Haikai (1962), amongst other works, with the composer's wife Yvonne Loriod on the piano and this performance has been released on CD which is how I came to know the works four years ago. Couleurs has since become one of my favourite compositions by Messiaen. Both Couleurs and Sept Haikai are works from Messiaen's middle period, when the composer used bird-songs in his compositions very extensively, and both work feature very virtuosic solo piano parts which are written especially for the highly gifted Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen's second wife.
On the other hand, sur Incises (1996 - 1998) is an unusually accessible composition by Boulez and a piece of work I am very, very fond of. It is so successful that the CD has been re-issued twice and there is a DVD around with a sampler on Youtube. I first came across it four or five years ago completely by chance and it has since become a frequent item on my playing lists. I have always wanted to hear Boulez conducting his own work live, esepecially by the wondrous EIC. Given this concert has most of my favourite musicians all at the same time on one stage performing two of my favourite works by two of my favourite composers, this is as close to my dream concert I can ever ask for.
The evening started with Couleurs de la Cite Celeste. The soloist changed from Pierre-Laurent Aimard to Sebastien Vichard, which caused minor disappointment. Vichard actually delivered a solid performance in a very fragmented work which is Couleurs, but it was Boulez and the EIC who ultimately disappointed. The brass players sounded like they were going to faint and silences between passages were not convincing. I am not sure whether it was because a relatively small ensemble was playing in a big hall, or that the players had been overworked for two big centenary concerts on consecutive nights playing highly demanding music, but the majority of the performance seemed to be dragging on a bit and at times drowned.
Sept Haikai was conceived after the composer's visit to Japan and it is a work inspired by the Japanese scenary, landscapes, gardens, birds, rituals etc. It involves a bigger ensemble, a fuller sound and the performance was an improvement from the previous work. Pierre-Laurent Aimard took the soloist spot and it was his magical cadenzas that basically stole the performance. I am still a bit unsure about the brass, but the involvement of the winds and violins this time gave an overall more refined sound and the winds were top-notch.
The strange programming of Boulez's own sur Incises actually was the highlight of the concert. It is a work developed from a single-movement toccata-like solo piano piece called Incises which consists of a combination of violent repeated notes or chords, interjecting melodies and resonating chords. Imagine that, give it to three pianists, three harpists and three mallet percussionists, shake and stir in Boulez's style, and you get 45 minutes of non-stop firework. The CD has a very clear and clinical sound (very well recorded) but this live performance used a lot more of the spatial environment. The exceedingly large hall, which I claimed to have given Couleurs a disadvantage, actually gave sur Incises an extra edge which created resonance and an acoustic sound world that was a real pleasure and privilege to experience. The dynamic range (especially the chords towards the end) and communications and tension among the players can only be clearly identified in a live performance.
Personally, this is not going to outstage the amazing opening night. Then again, how many people can actually stage these fiendishly difficult work in one concert back to back? Not Boulez and EIC at their very best, but still a very good concert and I certainly enjoyed sur Incises to every bit. It has been an honour to be in the audience at all.
This entry is adopted from an earlier blog of mine, which no longer exists
10 December, 2008
26 July, 2008
Damon Albarn: Monkey: Journey to the West
Monkey: Journey to the West
Opera in One Act
Saturday 26th July 2008
Royal Opera House, London
Composer Damon Albarn
Libretto Chen Shi-Zheng (after Wu Cheng-en)
Conductor Andre de Ridder
Here is another example of an adventurous rock musician getting into dangerous territories. Damon Albarn of Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen has teamed up with his Gorillaz partner Jamie Hewlett and acclaimed director Chen Shi-Zheng to create a full-scale opera based on the classic Chinese folktale of The Journey to the West.
Before getting accused of being snobbish or whatnot, let's get this straight first. This is not an opera, and it has little "academic" value. Even though it is advertised as an opera and is staged at the Royal Opera House, one should not look at this along the same line as a modern opera such as those by Peter Eotvos, Harrison Birtwistle or Thomas Ades. What it is, in a nutshell, is a choreographed acrobat display with music and occasional singing. It is more of a visual event than a music event. The bottom line is, it is more like a show for lighthearted entertainment than a serious production for the academics drilling into the libretto (or more appropriately here, the lyrics).
I must admit, I was a bit skeptical about the whole idea before going in, and I remained largely unconvinced by the end of it. Not that I had any doubt on Albarn particularly, but to condense so much literature and other artistic details into two hours of meaningful context is a rather difficult task. Frankly, I only went to see it because it is Damon Albarn, being a Blur fan myself at some stage, but this time it was quite disappointing. It’s a bit of a wishful thinking to expect songs (arias and duets) along the lines of Song 2 and Coffee & TV in an opera production (though if I remember correctly Lorin Maazel had a barber shop quartet in 1984) but all we got are minimalistic background music which have little musical content. Most of the time it consists of a chord repeating numerous time (a bit of a surprise that even Philip Glass has more variations) with a tune on top or an absolute abuse of the pentatonic scale. Given the intrinsic intonation of Mandarin, most of the sung passages aren’t very adventurous either. Thomas Bloch provided some interesting sound effects with his wondrous collection of rare instruments ranging from the ondes Martenot and glass harmonica, so that was a plus, but in any case, Albarn going on stage with a guitar singing along would have been a lot more interesting.
The production was in Mandarin, with English subtitles, so much was lost in translation. If one listens closely to the Mandarin, one could easily find the text vulgar, juvenile, and honestly just poor. Let’s not get too involved in the religious implications just yet, but when was the last time you hear a supposedly righteous and pure monk calling someone “a filthy pig”? Choosing a somewhat playful female monk didn’t help, but if it is artistic license, I will give them that. Scene 3, "Heavenly Peach Banquet", was particularly painful to watch, when girls dance in the Japanese kawaii fashion. None of the plot was substantially developed, and I do wonder how the audience would understand what was going on.
There were some incredible bits though. Jamie Hewlett, the designer for the visual rock band Gorillaz, made some excellent cartoon presentations for the unstagable scenes such as diving into the sea and flying across the sky at great speed - in Gorillaz style of course. Quirky and humourous, it provided an edge for the performance. The production was also filled with acrobat displays, a bit like Cirque du Soleil, and loads of staged fighting. These substantial visual elements made it more like a staged event than an actual opera in the conventional sense.
It is a difficult one. Personally, I am expecting more from a production of this scale, but a quick post-performance eavesdropping session indicated that the audiences were wildly amazed by the acrobat display. It did it for them, obviously, so I might just be asking for too much.
This entry is adopted from an earlier blog of mine, which no longer exists.
Opera in One Act
Saturday 26th July 2008
Royal Opera House, London
Composer Damon Albarn
Libretto Chen Shi-Zheng (after Wu Cheng-en)
Conductor Andre de Ridder
Here is another example of an adventurous rock musician getting into dangerous territories. Damon Albarn of Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen has teamed up with his Gorillaz partner Jamie Hewlett and acclaimed director Chen Shi-Zheng to create a full-scale opera based on the classic Chinese folktale of The Journey to the West.
Before getting accused of being snobbish or whatnot, let's get this straight first. This is not an opera, and it has little "academic" value. Even though it is advertised as an opera and is staged at the Royal Opera House, one should not look at this along the same line as a modern opera such as those by Peter Eotvos, Harrison Birtwistle or Thomas Ades. What it is, in a nutshell, is a choreographed acrobat display with music and occasional singing. It is more of a visual event than a music event. The bottom line is, it is more like a show for lighthearted entertainment than a serious production for the academics drilling into the libretto (or more appropriately here, the lyrics).
I must admit, I was a bit skeptical about the whole idea before going in, and I remained largely unconvinced by the end of it. Not that I had any doubt on Albarn particularly, but to condense so much literature and other artistic details into two hours of meaningful context is a rather difficult task. Frankly, I only went to see it because it is Damon Albarn, being a Blur fan myself at some stage, but this time it was quite disappointing. It’s a bit of a wishful thinking to expect songs (arias and duets) along the lines of Song 2 and Coffee & TV in an opera production (though if I remember correctly Lorin Maazel had a barber shop quartet in 1984) but all we got are minimalistic background music which have little musical content. Most of the time it consists of a chord repeating numerous time (a bit of a surprise that even Philip Glass has more variations) with a tune on top or an absolute abuse of the pentatonic scale. Given the intrinsic intonation of Mandarin, most of the sung passages aren’t very adventurous either. Thomas Bloch provided some interesting sound effects with his wondrous collection of rare instruments ranging from the ondes Martenot and glass harmonica, so that was a plus, but in any case, Albarn going on stage with a guitar singing along would have been a lot more interesting.
The production was in Mandarin, with English subtitles, so much was lost in translation. If one listens closely to the Mandarin, one could easily find the text vulgar, juvenile, and honestly just poor. Let’s not get too involved in the religious implications just yet, but when was the last time you hear a supposedly righteous and pure monk calling someone “a filthy pig”? Choosing a somewhat playful female monk didn’t help, but if it is artistic license, I will give them that. Scene 3, "Heavenly Peach Banquet", was particularly painful to watch, when girls dance in the Japanese kawaii fashion. None of the plot was substantially developed, and I do wonder how the audience would understand what was going on.
There were some incredible bits though. Jamie Hewlett, the designer for the visual rock band Gorillaz, made some excellent cartoon presentations for the unstagable scenes such as diving into the sea and flying across the sky at great speed - in Gorillaz style of course. Quirky and humourous, it provided an edge for the performance. The production was also filled with acrobat displays, a bit like Cirque du Soleil, and loads of staged fighting. These substantial visual elements made it more like a staged event than an actual opera in the conventional sense.
It is a difficult one. Personally, I am expecting more from a production of this scale, but a quick post-performance eavesdropping session indicated that the audiences were wildly amazed by the acrobat display. It did it for them, obviously, so I might just be asking for too much.
This entry is adopted from an earlier blog of mine, which no longer exists.
02 February, 2008
Messiaen: From the Canyons to the Stars
Messiaen: From the Canyons to the Stars
Saturday 2nd February 2008
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London
Messiaen Des Canyons aux etoiles
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
Jean-Christophe Vervoitte horn
Samuel Favre xylophone
Michel Cerutti glockenspiel
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Susanna Malkki conductor
6 years ago, it was my first year in the UK. It was my first time going to the Royal Festival Hall to see a concert. The programme was a Mozart piano concerto followed by Messiaen's celebrated Turangulila-Symphonie. The turnout was awful. Apart from the row that my school occupied, the audience scattered around the hall in such a pointillistic way that it was more pointillistic than Messiaen's later work. There were about 30-40 people in the hall and I have never ever seen the RFH that empty ever since.
Yes, it was also my first time seeing Pierre-Laurent Aimard - he was not famous back then and I had no idea who he was - with Dominique Kim on the ondes Martenot and Kent Nagano conducting. Most importantly, it was my first time hearing Messiaen's work, and that opened all gates to my subsequent quest for the wonderous world of contemporary music.
Now in 2008, it is the Messiaen centenary year. The renovated Southbank Centre is doing a year's long of music festival entitled From the Canyons to the Stars for one of the most important composers of the last century, and Messiaen's student Pierre-Laurent Aimard becomes the artistic director of the festival. Tonight's concert was the first concert of the series, given by Aimard and the baby of Pierre Boulez, a student of Messiaen himself, the Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC), with a number of soloists from the EIC. The conductor was the EIC's fifth and latest Music Director, Susanna Malkki. The programme was the title work of the festival - Des Canyons aux etoiles.
Des Canyons aux etoiles is one of the few Messiaen works that I have always read about but never had the chance to hear it either live or on recording. It is a highly unusual and demanding work in terms of the musical force employed and the sheer duration of the work. Scored for solo piano, solo horn, solo xylophone, solo glockenspiel, 13 string instruments (all playing individual parts), quadruple winds, triple brass and percussion (including the geophone and eoliphone), the sheer number of instruments on stage was an astonishing scene in itself. The work is approximately 100 minutes long - even longer than Mahler's longest symphony, the Third. The work was typically Messiaenian - birdsongs, Heavenly bliss, lots of colour, liberal choice of rhythms, multiple piano solos, you name it. It is inspired by Messiaen's journey to the Grand Canyon and his fascination of Nature, hence in this work he includes the geophone to represent the sand and the eoliphone to represent the wind explicitly.
The journey from the Earth's wonder to the Heavenly wonder takes twelve movements. The piano and horn are each given solo movements but the two tuned percussion soloists are given parts to take on a whole orchestra throughout. The result was a fantastic series of continuous pulses of small explosions. To be honest, if you are not in the mood, the fragments of sounds could be quite irritating, but I was, for once, totally into the music. Never have I found myself paying full attention to the music in concerts and the playing of every member of the ensemble. The Grand Canyonic ensemble of EIC was spot on under the direction of Susanna Malkki, and the extremely clinical sound of ensembleness took everyone away breathless. (It must have been Boulez's training!) Just when was the last time one can hear every single string and every wind instrument with such precision and clarity? It goes without saying that the solo passages are shows of their own right. Aimard was great himself, as always, but the talent of the horn soloist was simply beyond belief. The muted passages, the flutter-tongue, stopped trills and everything in the "Interstellar Call" - one can't even do those vocally, let alone on the notoriously difficult instrument. The percussion soloists were explosive throughout - and I can't wait to see them doing sur Incises later this year! Overall, I left the performance in complete awe.
Yes, it does make a concert particularly enjoyable when you sit right in the middle, slightly to the left so I can see the keyboard, the soloists and the conductor clearly - and it was only 10 quid for students. Real bargain for the 8th wonder of the world. It was truly an honour and privilege to attend the first night of the great festival and I cannot wait to see the following concerts.
This entry is adopted from an earlier blog of mine, which no longer exists.
Saturday 2nd February 2008
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London
Messiaen Des Canyons aux etoiles
Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
Jean-Christophe Vervoitte horn
Samuel Favre xylophone
Michel Cerutti glockenspiel
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Susanna Malkki conductor
6 years ago, it was my first year in the UK. It was my first time going to the Royal Festival Hall to see a concert. The programme was a Mozart piano concerto followed by Messiaen's celebrated Turangulila-Symphonie. The turnout was awful. Apart from the row that my school occupied, the audience scattered around the hall in such a pointillistic way that it was more pointillistic than Messiaen's later work. There were about 30-40 people in the hall and I have never ever seen the RFH that empty ever since.
Yes, it was also my first time seeing Pierre-Laurent Aimard - he was not famous back then and I had no idea who he was - with Dominique Kim on the ondes Martenot and Kent Nagano conducting. Most importantly, it was my first time hearing Messiaen's work, and that opened all gates to my subsequent quest for the wonderous world of contemporary music.
Now in 2008, it is the Messiaen centenary year. The renovated Southbank Centre is doing a year's long of music festival entitled From the Canyons to the Stars for one of the most important composers of the last century, and Messiaen's student Pierre-Laurent Aimard becomes the artistic director of the festival. Tonight's concert was the first concert of the series, given by Aimard and the baby of Pierre Boulez, a student of Messiaen himself, the Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC), with a number of soloists from the EIC. The conductor was the EIC's fifth and latest Music Director, Susanna Malkki. The programme was the title work of the festival - Des Canyons aux etoiles.
Des Canyons aux etoiles is one of the few Messiaen works that I have always read about but never had the chance to hear it either live or on recording. It is a highly unusual and demanding work in terms of the musical force employed and the sheer duration of the work. Scored for solo piano, solo horn, solo xylophone, solo glockenspiel, 13 string instruments (all playing individual parts), quadruple winds, triple brass and percussion (including the geophone and eoliphone), the sheer number of instruments on stage was an astonishing scene in itself. The work is approximately 100 minutes long - even longer than Mahler's longest symphony, the Third. The work was typically Messiaenian - birdsongs, Heavenly bliss, lots of colour, liberal choice of rhythms, multiple piano solos, you name it. It is inspired by Messiaen's journey to the Grand Canyon and his fascination of Nature, hence in this work he includes the geophone to represent the sand and the eoliphone to represent the wind explicitly.
The journey from the Earth's wonder to the Heavenly wonder takes twelve movements. The piano and horn are each given solo movements but the two tuned percussion soloists are given parts to take on a whole orchestra throughout. The result was a fantastic series of continuous pulses of small explosions. To be honest, if you are not in the mood, the fragments of sounds could be quite irritating, but I was, for once, totally into the music. Never have I found myself paying full attention to the music in concerts and the playing of every member of the ensemble. The Grand Canyonic ensemble of EIC was spot on under the direction of Susanna Malkki, and the extremely clinical sound of ensembleness took everyone away breathless. (It must have been Boulez's training!) Just when was the last time one can hear every single string and every wind instrument with such precision and clarity? It goes without saying that the solo passages are shows of their own right. Aimard was great himself, as always, but the talent of the horn soloist was simply beyond belief. The muted passages, the flutter-tongue, stopped trills and everything in the "Interstellar Call" - one can't even do those vocally, let alone on the notoriously difficult instrument. The percussion soloists were explosive throughout - and I can't wait to see them doing sur Incises later this year! Overall, I left the performance in complete awe.
Yes, it does make a concert particularly enjoyable when you sit right in the middle, slightly to the left so I can see the keyboard, the soloists and the conductor clearly - and it was only 10 quid for students. Real bargain for the 8th wonder of the world. It was truly an honour and privilege to attend the first night of the great festival and I cannot wait to see the following concerts.
This entry is adopted from an earlier blog of mine, which no longer exists.
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